One Thing Led to Another
by Lieutenant Caine
Summary: When dominoes fall the consequences can be far reaching.


**One Thing Led to Another…**

Monday morning staff meetings were notoriously mundane and most of the team would have been less than honest if they had said they enjoyed the mandatory gatherings. The only person who actually acted as if she enjoyed them was conspicuously absent that morning. Calleigh was usually the first on in the room after Horatio, and her empty chair stood out starkly. Horatio looked at his assembled team, his eyes flicking to the empty chair to his right.

"Eric, have you seen Calleigh this morning? She's usually here by now." Horatio's voice was mildly curious.

"I haven't seen her yet, H. She didn't call you?"

"No, I haven't heard from her." Horatio answered.

Just at that moment, a uniformed officer knocked on the door, slipped in quietly and handed Horatio a folded piece of paper. He thanked the man, opened the note and read silently, acutely aware of the watching eyes of Eric, Natalia, and Ryan.

_Horatio,_

_I've had to take a couple of sick days. Please don't ask why. I'll explain later._

_Calleigh_

Horatio looked up from the mysterious note in his hand and encountered the curious stares of three sets of eyes.

"Well there we have it, people. Calleigh is out ill for a couple of days. That means we will have to pull a little extra slack till she returns. Any questions?" _Beyond the burning question of why she had to take two sick days?_

Horatio knew well they were all dying to ask him what was in the note, but he really had nothing else to tell them. They knew as much as he did, which wasn't much at all.

"Now we need to make sure that we all tie up the loose ends on the Conner case. Eric, I'm pulling you to that one. Ryan I need you in DNA in the Ransom double murder…"

The meeting went on as planned, minus only Calleigh's bright smile and cheerful voice.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

As soon as he had dismissed the group, Horatio went straight to his office and closed the door. Pulling out his phone, he hit the speed dial for Calleigh's number. She answered on the second ring.

"Hello, Handsome." Her voice didn't sound like she was ill.

"Calleigh, I got your note. Are you okay? Pardon me for saying it…but you…you don't sound sick." Horatio gently probed without directly asking her what was wrong.

"Ah…um…well, it's rather a touchy issue, Horatio…um… You'd have to see the problem to understand it." She stammered through an explanation that was no explanation at all.

"I'll be by in about 15 minutes," came his quick response.

"But, Horatio…" The line went dead.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_Oh great, _thought Calleigh_, he's on his way here and I am so absolutely in trouble. How the heck am I supposed to tell my boss that I physically CAN'T get dressed to come to work? Crap, now I've got to find something to put on so I'll be decent when he gets here…something that won't hurt…_

Calleigh moved quickly to her closet to look through her wardrobe for something soft, silky, or satiny. In her current condition that was about the only type of material she could stand touching her skin. Just as she finished buttoning the thin swimsuit cover up she had found, she heard the doorbell ring, announcing Horatio's arrival. He would not have approved of her language.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Horatio rang the doorbell and stood outside patiently waiting while he surveyed the lovely view from Calleigh's 12th floor condominium. _Stunning view_, he thought. He was totally unprepared for the stunning view he saw when Calleigh opened the door.

Years later he would look back at that memory and laugh until his sides ached, but at the moment he was stunned speechless.

Calleigh was wearing a very short, very thin, almost sheer swimsuit cover up that did very little more than advertise that she wasn't wearing anything underneath.

When he was finally able to verbalize at all, it was a one word exclamation that summed up the several million thoughts that were all screaming through his head.

"Wow…" His eyes traveled to her face and saw the crimson blush rapidly spreading across her cheeks.

"Come in, Horatio, and close your mouth. You look like a fish out of water." She teased him in spite of her own obvious embarrassment.

Only when Horatio brushed by her shoulder did the real reason for her state of undress become apparent. Calleigh had a wicked sunburn. He could feel the fiery heat through three, make that two and a half layers of clothing, since the cover up didn't qualify as clothing in his mind. His jacket, silk shirt and her flimsy cover up did nothing to mask the heat radiating from her body.

"Calleigh, Sweetheart that's a bad sunburn you have. Mind telling me what happened?" He followed her to the living room where she turned to face him with a sheepish look on her face.

"Horatio, I am so embarrassed. Saturday after I got finished with those two 12's I pulled, all I wanted to do was to relax on the balcony and just rest. I came home, got comfortable and I…I fell asleep on the balcony. When I woke up I realized just how badly I was burned. Horatio I haven't been able to punt on underclothes much less work clothes. So I'm stuck here until I can stand to have material against my skin. Even this silly little thing is agony right now."

Horatio thought about this for a moment, his eyes now twinkling with amusement. Finally he chuckled. "Well you certainly can't come to work dressed like that. Might cause a bit of a disturbance."

"Horatio!" she gasped out and then dissolved into a fit of giggles. "It really is silly isn't it?" she choked out between fits of laughter. Then her mood sobered a bit and she looked at him like she looked at a striation that was puzzling her.

"I know that look, Calleigh. What are you thinking?" He asked.

"A favor?" Her look was one of almost desperation. "Two actually."

"Name it." He responded instantly.

"One, please don't tell the team why I'm really out."

"Okay, that's easy enough. What's the second thing?" He was totally unprepared for her next question.

"Would you please put some of this aloe gel on my back? I can do my own shoulders, but I can't reach all the way down my back."

For the second time in less than an hour, Horatio Caine was rendered silent. _Now how the devil am I supposed to smooth aloe gel all over that gorgeous naked back and not be affected? _He thought to himself.

"Ah… sure…no problem, Calleigh…" He said as he took the bottle of thick green gel she handed him.

When Calleigh turned her back to him and undid the cover up, letting it drop to the floor behind her, Horatio could have sworn that he was the one with the sunburn. Heat suffused his body all at once.

Calleigh gingerly lay face down on the couch, the entire back of her body from shoulders to feet exposed. Unable to stop his natural impulse to look, Horatio quickly realized that there were no swimsuit lines bisecting the vivid red of her skin. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he squeezed a generous portion of the gel into his hands and began to smooth it over her blistered skin. Starting with her shoulders, he gently worked his way down her back, along the sides of her ribs, which he found were quite ticklish, and down to the rounded swell of her tight, well-toned buttocks. There he paused.

"Calleigh?" His hands lingered on her back softly, his touch purposely light so as not to cause her further discomfort. "Do you want me to stop?" His voice was tight, affected.

"You're doing such a good job, Horatio don't stop…" Calleigh's voice was just as disturbed.

"Damn it, Calleigh." He muttered.

"What, Handsome?" She sassed back.

"You know what." He snapped.

"Oh, I do?" She continued to tease.

"Calleigh turn over and look at me…" He gulped in a breath when he realized what he was asking her to do and quickly snatched the cover up from the floor and handed it to her. When her loveliness was semi-covered by the flimsy top, he looked her in the eye and continued.

"Calleigh this is probably breaking every departmental rule in the book, plus some that are not written and not even though of yet. Do you really think I can touch you that intimately and not be affected? I am a man, and very much aware of you as a beautiful, totally desirable woman. Now do you still want me to continue, or do I walk out of here and we let everyone think you really were sick for two days?"

Her answer was quietly spoken, but no less emphatic for its softness.

"Horatio, I'm not afraid of anything the department can throw at us…are you?"

"Department be damned," Horatio growled as he gently and carefully pulled her into his arms for a blistering kiss.

Five years later….

"Daddy, tell me how you and Mommy got together," little Kenneth Ray Caine asked as he clambered up into Calleigh's lap for a bedtime story.

"Well, son," Horatio answered from the door of the bedroom where he'd been watching his wife wrestle and play with their very energetic, redheaded 4-year old, "It all started with a very, very bad sunburn, and one thing led to another."

A/N Yet again, I am moving more quickly than intended. But with most of the midwestern part of the US buried under a blizzard, I had nothing better to do than to release this one shot and another one entitled "The Softer Side of Steel". Maybe the read will cheer some of my readers who might be stuck at home going stir crazy.

Stay safe and warm, my friends.

Lieutenant Caine


End file.
